


constant state of saying goodbye

by heibai



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, soft angst, the long overdue mark's graduation fic, yeehaw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 03:09:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17520881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heibai/pseuds/heibai
Summary: We were at the beach and I have salt on my face.a kasaying goodbye is the hardest when you think it's going to be easy





	constant state of saying goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> //some context that might be useful//  
> so this is a snippet for a story that i've been plotting for forever but is too convoluted to ever write kjdcsd  
> basically, the dreamies are off on a roadtrip to the beach to celebrate Mark's highschool graduation, where next he'll go abroad for uni. 
> 
> angst ensues. byee

The sun was setting and we were sitting on a weathered concrete stairs, the small pebbles that were embedded to it god knows when looked like tiny little black pearls, polished by years and decades of rubbing against the soles of tourists’ rubber sandals. The faraway sound of laughter coming from the rest of the group who were playing a late game of beach volleyball mixed in with the calm rumbles of the ocean, politely announcing to us, the only two left out of the game, the inevitability of our adulthood.

 

I wanted to tell him, how cliche is this? How cheesy. Just add in some sparkles and faraway bangs of firework and it would've been picture perfect.

 

But Mark would've answered with something logical like, oh, it's too early for fireworks, or more likely, what are you talking about?

 

Because romance is not your thing, isn't it?

 

Romance is never his thing.

 

"The 25th?" I wasn't intending my words to come out as a question. I intended it to sound like a confirmation, something confident. Something sure. A question made it seem as if I _wasn't_ sure or worse, as if I had somehow backtracked on my personal resolve of letting him go without any fanfare. Besides, letting go of him _should_ have been an easy ordeal. What with all of us already dragging the concept to hell and back and twisting it into something akin to a drudge that we can’t wait to shake off just so we can get it over with. _'when is he going to leave the countryyyy,'_ became something synonymous to _'five more minutes, mom'_ in our circle of friends.

 

Yet still, they cry when the day came.

 

"11 PM." He answered my rhetorical question in the most straightforward way possible and I didn't know if I should be glad or if I should just succumb to my wish of grabbing him by his collars and shaking it while I would scream all of my bottled up emotions right to his face.

 

But I couldn't. Because I was the one who told him that there would be no tears, there would be no eulogies. Not from me, at least. Because I'm a person who lived in a constant state of saying goodbyes to those that I love. Every night, without fail, I would say to myself. Goodbye world, goodbye love, goodbye. Because I never know when they're going to be taken away from me, or when I would be taken away from them, so a cautiously pleasant farewell is just a safety net, isn't it?

 

Though I couldn't help but wonder how he didn't even flinch when I told him about my way of life, because well… indirectly I've confessed that he's someone that I _love._ There was only a smile on his face after he heard my speech. Something kind, something mundane. A grateful smile, that's it. Maybe it didn't register to him that yes, he really _was_ included inside my _goodbye love_ list, and that no, I wasn’t joking _._ Or maybe he was playing along with me, adopting my ideology for a day and putting up a strong front as a way to respect me. Which was dumb. Because my ideology wasn’t created for those who already have a comfortable level of mental strength. It's one for cowards who do nothing but run away.

 

(Or maybe it was just because he didn't love me back. Which is a big possibility in and on itself. And I’m ok with that too.)

 

Look at Jisung and his heartfelt speech of gratitude. Said in front of a bonfire, even. What a cheat. He could tell everyone it was the smoke that caused him to tear up, and the crafty little shit _did._ Though still, I will admit an act of bravery when I see one and his was one. Or Donghyuk's stand up comedy routine that effortlessly brought everyone into laughter-induced tears, encompassing all the inside jokes and silliness that we've stored up for the last three years. Crazy how he could remember it all. Crazy how he could turn that pain into something so humorous without doing any harm to himself.

 

Those are strength. Those are dedication. Me? I could only stand by the side, keeping everything and everyone at an arm's length away as I couldn't defeat the ever persistent thought of how nothing will last forever. It's a hard thing to do, cancelling my way of life, that is. Because the world keeps on validating it by taking away all that I ever had, and all that I ever loved, one by one by one. Until now I'm living like that one minimalist interior designer that my mom so loves. The one that lives with only 28 items in her possession or something.

 

I couldn't be bothered to make a new connection because look at this. Once I've made one, once I've decided to let someone take a little peek into my soul, he'll be gone in two days to god knows where for god knows how long.

 

Good riddance, if I say so myself.

 

"11? We still have an extra day to spend then?"

 

The smile he had when I asked that question held a little tinge of mockery, as if he was testing the goal I told him earlier this week, the one where I said that I was not, no matter what happens, going to break down into anything sappy, for his own sake. Because he must've saw and heard so many _awwwwwww I'm going to miss you_ boohoo shit that I was not going to add to it my own, mostly unoriginal version of a tearful farewell.

 

Though he still looked at me with the sun painted on his lips and stars, who already lurked behind the dusty pink, orange, and purple layer of wispy clouds like some creepy interstellar stalker, were embedded inside his eyes and I felt nothing else but the urge to be sappy. Honestly, the beachfront setting we found ourselves holing at for the last three days was so picturesque I feared that the police force of the universe would descent down on a UFO and arrest me, on the base of ignoring such rare times when the world was being graceful enough by allowing everything to work on my favour. _Tell him,_ I heard them whisper to me, slipped in between the crashing of waves against the sand, _be sappy and cheesy and unnecessarily sentimental._ But you know how when your parents finally relented and gave you something you’ve been asking for in a way that only little ungrateful brats do, you will feel fearful and guilty and ended up saying, _‘never mind?’_

 

Exactly.

 

"If that's what you want, then yes. I'm free either way," he proceeded to put his chin on the heel of his palm, and however hard I tried, I couldn't bite back my exasperated chiding as surely his hand was still sticky from all the unwashed watermelon juice that ran down from when we opened three entire globes to have for snacks earlier that evening.

 

Mark laughed at my precautionary warnings, of how tomorrow he'll wake up with a cluster of acne and regret all of his life choices, and said something that managed to tore down the poorly made walls around the perimeter of my heart. "I'm going to miss you."

 

If you skimmed on the procedures when building your only means of mental-preservation, be it because you're of a stingy nature or because you did it in haste, not knowing you need one until a giant was already threatening to wreck your pristinely untouched village with an iron mallet, you have no one else to blame but yourself when one gentle nudge was all it took before it crumbled to nothing.

 

Just dust, straws, and dried up shit and excuses you threw together one lonely night after you've finally decided not to be a part of any more excruciatingly one sided heartbreak, ever again.

 

I didn't say anything to him. Not then, not afterwards. Not even during the long drive from the beach back to each of our respective homes or the idle, useless waiting game in front of the front gate to my house. Him wanting to tell me something and me to him, yet nobody was willing to break the comfortable silence and it was at that moment when I regretted the fact that we've grown close enough to savor each and every silences when they descended upon us.

 

I don’t want to know, so I didn’t ask. And Mark in his kindness didn’t say a word in return. For he didn’t want to ruin anything, any little leftover thing that I so gracefully left behind after I’ve finished doing my great mental purge so he could hold on to it for however long he sees fit. When he’s gone, I would put it to the furthermost cabinet inside my brain, and pile on top of it hobbies, distractions, and others that would surely come after him. But when, and _if,_ he came back, I would dust it off and drape it over my shoulders. Just as a way for him to find his way back home if he needed to.

 

But I didn’t say all that to him, never. As you know, I couldn’t do it, even if I would.

 

Though well… probably my tears have told him so much more than some measly four worded sentence could ever hope to achieve.

 

It was so easy for him to mock me at that moment. He could've just say, _'is that it? Is that the extent to your much touted resolve? I knew you were weak from the first time I met you and so this moment felt like a triumph to me.'_ He could've at least smile, at least laugh at me and tell me how stupid he found my behaviour to be. But he didn't. I have yet to decide if I'm thankful or upset for his quiet, unquestionably accepting approach, but that was what happened and I had nothing else to hold on to as a meaningful last moment together with him. I just gotta make do with what I got, I guess.

 

So I cling to the memory of the last time we were together, _alone,_ like how his sticky palm clung onto mine. How he creeped his sweet fingers down my arm, slipping them between mine and clasping them together into a messy, sticky bunch of a glutinous handhold.

 

I lied to everyone when they asked me of the origin of the crystallised tracks on my cheeks. We were at the beach. I have salt on my face. What's the big deal with that?

 

Mark then told me that I should call him often. That he would remember me if he ever walk past any art supply store when he goes on an adventure around his new town. So I told him, "suits me right." It was a softer alternative to the words, _'do whatever you want, I don't care.'_ Because I wanted to not care. Truthfully, if I was just that little bit stronger than my then current self, I wouldn't even care if I did or did not. But I was weak, and so I couldn’t stop myself from caring too much.

 

Hopelessly, desperately, in order to stop myself from doing such, I cut it off before the gangrene growing on it caused my whole entire mental body to rot. I cut a whole entire limb clean off my socket. You could say that I was not proud of how proud I was, of how easy I decided to chuck whatever extent of relationship we had down the trash bin of _love forever goodbyes_.

 

"Go. They're looking for you," it was a miracle that I managed to nudge my head to the direction of five overhyped rascals who were jumping around weak embers of a newly born bonfire, because for me, it felt as if I was trying to move an immovable object. Does it mean that my resolve is an unstoppable force? If that's so, I have a suspicion that another gangrenous limb would grow on top of my fresh wound. More rotten than ever before. But that's a problem for the future me, so whatever.

 

Our palms were stuck on their contact point when he stood up from our little haven, skin tenting up in that little bit of struggle in which I fooled myself that the _little_ shake he did was a way for him to show that he didn't care about me. At least not more than how he cared for the rest of us. Won't that be easier? It would've made my life a whole lot easier, yes, indeed.

 

But him being a stupid, thickheaded dumbdumb that he is, of course he decided to close our chapter together, _my_ chapter regarding him (he could write about me more in his spare time, as if I'd give a damn), with a hesitant kiss on my hairline.

 

Sappy. Cheesy. Unnecessarily sentimental.

 

I only waved him off with a huff in my breath, before pretending, to nobody in particular but the croaking seagulls and my own conscience, that I got some sand stuck inside my eyelids so I could have all the leisure in this judgmental Earth to wipe the tears that wouldn't seem to stop dripping down.

 

I told everyone that I'm a person constantly living in a state of saying goodbyes.

 

I just find it hilarious how awfully terrible I am at saying them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote the draft for this basically in one go this morning at work. i was just s o burnt out with work that i gotta tune out and do something fun  
> (if writing angst is considered as fun, that is)  
> i'm sorry if my run-on sentences are unbearable and i'm also sorry for the first person pov...
> 
> WELL I GUESS MARK REALLY DID GRADUATE KSJDCNS and this also is a way for me to say sorry for not writing markren all that much anymore sobs. I hope 2019 will change that but who knows tbh these kids so unpredictable i don't know who i'll ship with who next jskcsd
> 
> hmu @ my twitter [@moon__soil](https://twitter.com/moon__soil) ~


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